Literary works key to thriving sci-fi industry

According to the 2024 China Science Fiction Industry Report released on Saturday the domestic science fiction industry generated revenue of 113.29 billion yuan ($16 billion) in 2023, growing 29.1 percent year-on-year.

Compared with the rate of growth of the revenue from other films and TV works and the even doubling speed of cultural tourism, the publication part looks less significant with a growth rate of 4.3 percent, but that's a hard-won result against the background of the fall in revenue for the whole publication sector. Especially, works of literature that tell the stories first and lay the intellectual property basis for all the other parts of the whole science fiction industry.

Writers usually earn less compared to the TV, film and tourism industries, it is they that make it possible for the rest to make money. The China Science Fiction Overseas Influence Report (2018-23), which was also released on Friday, shows that The Three-Body Problem, a science fiction novel authored by Liu Cixin, is the leading domestic literary work that has gained a large audience overseas, while his another novel The Wandering Earth that tells a story of how humanity has to move the Earth away from the dying sun to escape the latter's harmful effects has also gained widespread recognition.

All these point to the future direction for the development of domestic science fiction. Of course films and TV series with eye-catching special effects are needed, but more importantly, support is needed for emerging writers and their books so as to sustain the whole industry in the long run.